9 ms·

If they can't afford to pay anyone enough to insure them, they should ask for charity, because that's what they need.

by sDlEzAtyoNAz 8y ago

5874-4b22-a4e0 8y ago
They should go to the emergency room, iirc its free if they can't extract the money.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  You can't get stuff like chemo or a transplant at an ER. They are only required to (attempt) to (temporarily) stabilize you. "Just go to the ER" also is pretty much the most inefficiently stupid way of handling healthcare for the needy you can come up with.
ceejayoz 8y ago
Shockingly, it turns out that most charities don't have the financial resources to dedicate a hundred thousand dollars for a single heat transplant.
- sDlEzAtyoNAz 8y ago
  Also shockingly, if you already know you need a heart transplant, you're well beyond the point where any market-based risk pool is going to offer to pay for your transplant in exchange for a premium that's below the cost of your transplant. You need charity, not a market.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    > Also shockingly, if you already know you need a heart transplant, you're well beyond the point where any market-based risk pool is going to offer to pay for your transplant in exchange for a premium that's below the cost of your transplant. Everyone is at potential risk for needing something like a transplant eventually. Making the pool large enough allows reasonable premiums, just as I can pay a couple hundred bucks a year to replace my entire house if it burns down. The rest of the developed world defines the risk pool as "everyone", and the end result is healthcare costs half of ours (including the tax component) and similar outcomes. > You need charity, not a market. You need government, not a charity.
    - sDlEzAtyoNAz 8y ago
      >Everyone is at potential risk for needing something like a transplant eventually. Not everyone is at equal risk, and many choices people make can have an impact on that risk. That's the point of this thread. >Making the pool large enough allows reasonable premiums, just as I can pay a couple hundred bucks a year to replace my entire house if it burns down. What is 'large enough'? The populations of many entire European countries are dwarfed by the number of subscribers to several health insurance companies in the US. Of course we don't know how large health insurance companies would get in a market without heavy government interference, but do you have some reason to believe the size of pools in a market with less interference would result in unreasonable premiums? >The rest of the developed world defines the risk pool as "everyone", and the end result is healthcare costs half of ours (including the tax component) and similar outcomes. And our health care system requires subscribers to insurance companies to pay those insurance companies to A) provide charity to people who wouldn't be able to afford to buy insurance in real market and B) pay for routine care (i.e. care where there is no risk to insure against - you know you're going to need it). And of course the health insurance company is going to collect its cut of the money that the government has forced subscribers to funnel through those companies. Is it really any surprise that system gets expensive? >You need government, not a charity. You need charity, whether it's administered by a public organization or a private organization or funded by private individuals or taxpayers.
      - ceejayoz 8y ago
        > do you have some reason to believe the size of pools in a market with less interference would result in unreasonable premiums? Demonstrably so. Just look at pre-Obamacare "high risk pools" for concrete examples. https://www.kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/high-risk-pools-for-uninsurable-individuals/ https://www.kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/high-risk-pool... You'll also see it in other insurance markets, like life, house, car, malpractice, etc. - many people are largely uninsurable in these markets. > What is 'large enough'? The populations of many entire European countries are dwarfed by the number of subscribers to several health insurance companies in the US. It's not so much raw population as how much you're allowed to slice it up. A decent sized city is big enough - many corporations of a few thousand people self-insure as it's cheaper. The problem is when you allow insurance to pick their customers. They just pick the healthy ones, if allowed. > And our health care system requires subscribers to insurance companies to pay those insurance companies to A) provide charity to people who wouldn't be able to afford to buy insurance in real market... You are using some very weird definitions of "charity". Obamacare's subsidized premiums aren't shouldered by the insurance companies, they're provided by the government. Those insurance companies are making bank, not providing charity. Single-payer or income-based subsidized healthcare isn't "charity". Insurance paying out more than premiums taken in for a particular subscriber isn't "charity", it's how insurance works. > Is it really any surprise that system gets expensive? Oh, not at all, but that's because we've picked the least cost-effective bits of both private and public healthcare systems to combine into a monstrosity.
frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
You're okay with a society where people die on the street because they didn't have enough wealth? How much money you have isn't a determinant of the moral worth of your life, it's not even a proxy. So why do consider it as a relevant detail in the allocation of healthcare? Why should the obese, smoking trust-fund kid get the heart bypass but the obese smoking poor guy not? Liberalism (classical or otherwise) requires some base level at which we treat people as equals, it seems the ability to continue living would be about as base as we can get.
- sDlEzAtyoNAz 8y ago
  >You're okay with a society where people die on the street because they didn't have enough wealth? I didn't take a position on whether or not I'm okay with a society where people die in the street if they don't have enough wealth. All I said was that people who can't afford to buy health insurance need charity, whether that charity is public or private. The market is not going to help them. Attempting to fit that round peg into a square hole is going to cause a lot of issues that are very obvious to predict, in addition to all of the issues that are less easy to predict. >How much money you have isn't a determinant of the moral worth of your life Neither is anything else. The 'moral worth of your life' is fundamentally an opinion, not a fact. >So why do consider it as a relevant detail in the allocation of healthcare? Because that's how we allocate most goods and services, and it does a fairly good job at it. >Why should the obese, smoking trust-fund kid get the heart bypass but the obese smoking poor guy not? That's a pretty complicated question that comes down to an individual's own priorities and that individual's assessment of the potential effects of various alternative policies on the attainment of various goals.
  - rland 8y ago
    >people who can't afford to buy health insurance need charity, whether that charity is public or private. The market is not going to help them. Attempting to fit that round peg into a square hole is going to cause a lot of issues that are very obvious to predict, in addition to all of the issues that are less easy to predict. So, a free market is ineffective at allocating resources in healthcare. Unless we redefine healthcare to mean "care for people who are not sick," which does not really make it healthcare at all, does it?

If they can't afford to pay anyone enough to insure them, they should ask for charity, because that's what they need.

5874-4b22-a4e0 8y ago

They should go to the emergency room, iirc its free if they can't extract the money.

ceejayoz 8y ago
You can't get stuff like chemo or a transplant at an ER. They are only required to (attempt) to (temporarily) stabilize you. "Just go to the ER" also is pretty much the most inefficiently stupid way of handling healthcare for the needy you can come up with.

ceejayoz 8y ago

Shockingly, it turns out that most charities don't have the financial resources to dedicate a hundred thousand dollars for a single heat transplant.

sDlEzAtyoNAz 8y ago
Also shockingly, if you already know you need a heart transplant, you're well beyond the point where any market-based risk pool is going to offer to pay for your transplant in exchange for a premium that's below the cost of your transplant. You need charity, not a market.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  > Also shockingly, if you already know you need a heart transplant, you're well beyond the point where any market-based risk pool is going to offer to pay for your transplant in exchange for a premium that's below the cost of your transplant. Everyone is at potential risk for needing something like a transplant eventually. Making the pool large enough allows reasonable premiums, just as I can pay a couple hundred bucks a year to replace my entire house if it burns down. The rest of the developed world defines the risk pool as "everyone", and the end result is healthcare costs half of ours (including the tax component) and similar outcomes. > You need charity, not a market. You need government, not a charity.
  - sDlEzAtyoNAz 8y ago
    >Everyone is at potential risk for needing something like a transplant eventually. Not everyone is at equal risk, and many choices people make can have an impact on that risk. That's the point of this thread. >Making the pool large enough allows reasonable premiums, just as I can pay a couple hundred bucks a year to replace my entire house if it burns down. What is 'large enough'? The populations of many entire European countries are dwarfed by the number of subscribers to several health insurance companies in the US. Of course we don't know how large health insurance companies would get in a market without heavy government interference, but do you have some reason to believe the size of pools in a market with less interference would result in unreasonable premiums? >The rest of the developed world defines the risk pool as "everyone", and the end result is healthcare costs half of ours (including the tax component) and similar outcomes. And our health care system requires subscribers to insurance companies to pay those insurance companies to A) provide charity to people who wouldn't be able to afford to buy insurance in real market and B) pay for routine care (i.e. care where there is no risk to insure against - you know you're going to need it). And of course the health insurance company is going to collect its cut of the money that the government has forced subscribers to funnel through those companies. Is it really any surprise that system gets expensive? >You need government, not a charity. You need charity, whether it's administered by a public organization or a private organization or funded by private individuals or taxpayers.
    - ceejayoz 8y ago
      > do you have some reason to believe the size of pools in a market with less interference would result in unreasonable premiums? Demonstrably so. Just look at pre-Obamacare "high risk pools" for concrete examples. https://www.kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/high-risk-pools-for-uninsurable-individuals/ https://www.kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/high-risk-pool... You'll also see it in other insurance markets, like life, house, car, malpractice, etc. - many people are largely uninsurable in these markets. > What is 'large enough'? The populations of many entire European countries are dwarfed by the number of subscribers to several health insurance companies in the US. It's not so much raw population as how much you're allowed to slice it up. A decent sized city is big enough - many corporations of a few thousand people self-insure as it's cheaper. The problem is when you allow insurance to pick their customers. They just pick the healthy ones, if allowed. > And our health care system requires subscribers to insurance companies to pay those insurance companies to A) provide charity to people who wouldn't be able to afford to buy insurance in real market... You are using some very weird definitions of "charity". Obamacare's subsidized premiums aren't shouldered by the insurance companies, they're provided by the government. Those insurance companies are making bank, not providing charity. Single-payer or income-based subsidized healthcare isn't "charity". Insurance paying out more than premiums taken in for a particular subscriber isn't "charity", it's how insurance works. > Is it really any surprise that system gets expensive? Oh, not at all, but that's because we've picked the least cost-effective bits of both private and public healthcare systems to combine into a monstrosity.

frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago

You're okay with a society where people die on the street because they didn't have enough wealth? How much money you have isn't a determinant of the moral worth of your life, it's not even a proxy. So why do consider it as a relevant detail in the allocation of healthcare? Why should the obese, smoking trust-fund kid get the heart bypass but the obese smoking poor guy not? Liberalism (classical or otherwise) requires some base level at which we treat people as equals, it seems the ability to continue living would be about as base as we can get.

sDlEzAtyoNAz 8y ago
>You're okay with a society where people die on the street because they didn't have enough wealth? I didn't take a position on whether or not I'm okay with a society where people die in the street if they don't have enough wealth. All I said was that people who can't afford to buy health insurance need charity, whether that charity is public or private. The market is not going to help them. Attempting to fit that round peg into a square hole is going to cause a lot of issues that are very obvious to predict, in addition to all of the issues that are less easy to predict. >How much money you have isn't a determinant of the moral worth of your life Neither is anything else. The 'moral worth of your life' is fundamentally an opinion, not a fact. >So why do consider it as a relevant detail in the allocation of healthcare? Because that's how we allocate most goods and services, and it does a fairly good job at it. >Why should the obese, smoking trust-fund kid get the heart bypass but the obese smoking poor guy not? That's a pretty complicated question that comes down to an individual's own priorities and that individual's assessment of the potential effects of various alternative policies on the attainment of various goals.
- rland 8y ago
  >people who can't afford to buy health insurance need charity, whether that charity is public or private. The market is not going to help them. Attempting to fit that round peg into a square hole is going to cause a lot of issues that are very obvious to predict, in addition to all of the issues that are less easy to predict. So, a free market is ineffective at allocating resources in healthcare. Unless we redefine healthcare to mean "care for people who are not sick," which does not really make it healthcare at all, does it?